


and in defeat:

by chartreuser



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst!, Books!, Bye Week, Introspection, M/M, Sweet stuff! Fluff!, the beach, whats not to love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 17:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13839891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: There are a lot of things Nicky wants, and there are a lot of things Nicky loves, and a lot of things that Nicky cannot have.





	and in defeat:

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [in a jar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804188) by [chartreuser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser). 



Nobody has talked to Nicky about the bye week. He’d known it was coming, of course, but it felt very much like nothing until the day it came, and then it’d turned into this struggle, where Nicky had woken up one day and there wasn’t any hockey anymore, that he had to do something else other than play.

Nicky had piles of books that he deserted on his coffee table from hockey, in any case: he bought them when he was five, seven years younger. It was a bad habit that he grew to cut off; all Nicky did on red-eye flights was stare into the bleak blank nothing out of his window seat instead of staring at words that would never really sit in his mind right. Nicky had been settled into his sofa with his book open and a game on the television screen when someone barged into his house and his contentedly empty mind, clanging all the way.

“Come with me,” says Ovi, because it did turn out that Nicky had a little bit of hockey left for the week, after all, even if it appeared to him as a bully standing in the middle of his living room at four in the morning, “Please?”

“Ovi,” Nicky warns, unable to help his smile, because maybe he was meant to grow softer as he aged, and maybe all the traded teammates had taken all of that teenage snark with him, chip by chip, until he lost it all at thirty. “What are you doing?”

“Asking you to be there,” says Ovi, and he looks exhausted, but he’s still trying to smile. “We have nothing to do, so we might as well.”

Nicky raises his eyebrows. “Speak for yourself.”

“You wanna tell me you had something plan?” Ovi asks, thrusting his hands into his grey sweatpants.

“Alex,” Nicky tries, and he wonders if he should act sleepy enough to him so he’d wander away with his huge suitcases and his soft jumpers, like it’d be effective in front of Ovechkin at all, who has ridiculous sunglasses on. “It’s four in the morning.”

“And you’re not asleep,” Alex counters, but he melts into the space beside Nicky on the sofa. “Come,” he says, voice quiet and uncharacteristic. “We can stay on quiet beaches; you can read your books.”

“I don’t have time for books lately,” Nicky says, and it’s a concession, and they both know it.

“Now you do,” says Alex, settling his arm along the back of Nicky’s sofa. He’s grinning. “I don’t even have to be there, if you want me gone.”

“Why would I ever want you gone,” Nicky questions tonelessly, as television-Alex scores on screen, muted. “A whole decade,” he says, switching languages so that Alex wouldn’t understand. “You’ve been the best part of the whole decade.” But it’s not as if Alex is that easily defeated, anyway, not when it comes to Nicky. “Okay,” Nicky relents, finally. “I’ll go.”

“Okay?” Alex asks, inching closer. His hand comes down onto Nicky’s shoulder, shy like an embrace. “Okay, so go pack. Flight’s soon. I tidy for you.”

“Maybe book my tickets first,” offers Nicky, rising to find his laptop, but Alex takes the lead to push him into the direction of his bedroom. Abruptly, Nicky’s hit by the fatigue of staying up, but there’s nothing to do about it now; he’s promised, and Nicky doesn’t tend to promise him anything that he can’t help.

“No,” Alex says, “No, no, it’s okay,” hand hot on Nicky’s back. Nicky wonders if he’s grinning; he sounds like it, so he turns to check, and he—is. “Already bought them for you.”

—

The plane takes off three and a half hours later, and Nicky only had the time to push what he can remember to bring into the empty spaces in Alex’s suitcases, which meant no books, which meant he’d bought some, _again_ , and now he’s looking at the cover like the illustrations would sway him into even reading five words of it.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Nicky says, barely audible over the engines, but Alex leans into him anyway, his forehead almost touching his temple. “Or how this is going to do anything.”

“Maybe nothing needs help,” says Alex, and it feels like the warmth of his hand held. “Just fun.”

“With me,” Nicky asks drily. “Is this the time?” He turns his head, barely. “It seems…”

“Like wrong timing?”

Nicky bites down on his words. “Yeah.”

“Yes,” Alex says, carelessly, “I know; we been saying that for a long time.”

Nicky turns away.

“I’m not saying it’s bad thing,” Alex continues. He nudges his elbow. “You want to be stuck in head forever? Not saying you wrong,” he says, like he hasn’t been stuck on it himself, that stench of failure, of bland, mundane despair, “Just maybe don’t think so much, you know? You…” Alex trails off, and he’s searching for the words now, because communication between two people who converse in their second language will never be easy, and they’re not the sort to take their victories for granted, anymore. “Feel better, if you’re not this sad.”

“Sad,” Nicky echoes, humourless despite trying.

“Sad,” Ovi repeats. “You gonna argue?”

“No,” says Nicky, sour, and then Alex leans away from him, like Nicky hadn’t ran around his room jamming things into suitcases three quarters full, just to make him happy.

“Nicky,” Alex says, “If you didn’t want to—”

Nicky’s hand darts out to grab his wrist, to settle their elbows together on the armrest between them. “I want to,” he says, Alex huge under his fingers. He feels ancient, old and cramped in the commercial airline, like he hadn’t spent a significant part of his life on planes, with Alex, with everything else that made up the rest of their team. “You couldn’t make me do anything, you know?”

“I know,” Alex smiles. Nicky can hear the material of his jumper against the leather of his seat. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” says Nicky, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself, or the newly-rattling feeling of losing something significant that he never had. “I’m just—”

“I know,” says Alex again. He leaves his wrist in Nicky’s grasp for the rest of the flight, and the both of them stare at nothing until the plane taxis.

“You think so much,” Alex says, as they’re waiting for the rest of the passengers to empty. He sounds as old as Nicky feels. “Relax, okay?”

Nicky thinks about responding. _Okay_ , he wants to say. _I’m going to try_. _We’ll both try; we’ll do it together._ But it sounds too oft repeated; and Nicky has grown tired of not making any progress, of aching from it, so he doesn’t do anything other than smile, than looking up and wondering about this whole fucking week of no hockey.

—

It’s not as if Nicky’s that out of touch with his own feelings to not call it love. It’s just difficult to confront the spectre of it; laid bare vulnerably without anything to distract from it; no games to play, nobody else for Alex to touch. It’s just that Nicky had thought that he was in charge of all of his wants, before, from practice; there are some things you’ll want so much that your teeth aches, but cannot have. There are people to disappear from your life, games to lose, injuries to bear. Sometimes desires can’t be satiated, regardless of how much you deserve.

It’s hot for this time in February.

“Slow,” Alex teases, smiling without his teeth. “Hurry, Backy; I’m hungry,” he calls, because he’s still an asshole. “I want food, quickly, we get an Uber and ask them what to eat, then we pay driver in sushi.”

“I don’t think that’s how Ubers work,” says Nicky. “Are you Andre?”

“You’re missing the children already?” Alex laughs. “I’ll tell kids we went to the beach and all you thought of was them.”

Nicky remembers bye weeks spent in Greenie’s apartment, snacking on junk and swearing each other to secrecy; Februaries when they were colder in school; roads frozen over in Gävle like ice rinks.

“I think they’re too busy fucking each other to care,” says Nicky, watching the sunlight rain down on him. Alex looks like a lost emperor in the light, squinting into his phone, into the empty carless distance. Abruptly Nicky feels like he’s intruding; like no one was ever meant to see Alex looking old and less than cheerful.

After a long minute of Nicky being unable to look away, Alex turns to him and smiles with a joke. “Good for them,” he says, “I’m too old to get it up.”

“Not too old to get a cab,” Nicky points out, and throws his phone at him, marvelling at the quietness of the world, or inside the both of them, at least. “Use my phone instead.”

—

The hotel room looks like every other hotel room. Nicky should have probably gotten his own; but it’d be a waste of Alex’s money if he hadn’t came, and the bed’s big enough, in any case. Alex is the one that’s built like a brick wall; Nicky has slept in enough people’s beds to know that he doesn’t mind people drooling onto him.

“Thought you wanted to eat,” Nicky says offhandedly, climbing into the bed after Alex throws the sheets over and sinks inside like he wasn’t just fantasising about putting raw fish into his mouth ten minutes ago in the hotel lobby. “We can go eat, come on,” Nicky beckons, at the lump under the bedsheets, the half-closed eyes, the look of him; silent and lazy. “You don’t want to eat your weight in salmon?”

“Maybe later.”

“Ovi,” Nicky tries. “Alex.”

Alex turns to face him again, opens one eye, assessing, before he holds his arms open, intention-less. Nicky’s traitorous heart asks for him anyway.

“Okay,” Nicky says. “Okay,” and then climbs into bed with him, into his arms, also intention-less. The air conditioning on his skin floods with him lethargy, enough for his eyes to linger at Alex’s jaw, his beard, the small, healed scar that Nicky had never asked about before.

They’ll just—be here for a while.

—

“You think they have sushi by the beach?” Alex whispers, when he’s tired of pretending to sleep, audible and painfully intimate by Nicky’s right ear. Nicky wants him enough that he doesn’t want sex, here, despite his body under his hands, lax beneath him. He wants— he doesn’t know what he wants. Some silver, some gold, Alex eating Japanese by the ocean.

“I’m sure if you ask nicely enough,” Nicky whispers back, dreading the moment Alex leaps into action and drags them out of this hushed and frozen state. “Maybe they even do delivery.”

“...To the beach?”

“Sure,” Nicky says, Alex’s grey shirt bunching up with the slow movements of his hand, underneath the duvet. “Why not.”

“You think they charge extra?”

Nicky tilts his head up. “What are you talking about,” he asks, loathe to sit upright. Alex in here is close and warm and relaxed and nothing like Ovechkin on the ice, six-time Rocket Richard winner. “It’s not like you give a shit.”

“You give a shit, maybe,” Alex raises his eyebrows. “You’re… practical.”

Nicky purses his lips against a smile. “You’re making practical sound like a bad thing.”

“Backy has flaw?” Alex teases. “No, never, Lars Nicklas Bäckström will spend money only on important things, like furniture and hockey sticks and snus.”

“I’ll buy a coke machine in my house, for you.”

“Really?” Alex asks. They’re still whispering.

Nicky holds his breath, a little terrified of what he might answer. “I don’t know if you’re around enough for me to do that,” he says. “Maybe I should have bought it a few years ago.”

“Oh,” says Alex.

—

They get out of bed. They get out of bed, so Alex walks him to the beach, shoulders brushing, head tilted up into the sun. The heat is heavy enough to be sultry, and they’re drenched in it as Alex holds up tiny souvenirs, buying them all for the hundred thousand friends that are blowing up his phone, back in the hotel where they left it.

Nicky tastes the shore on his tongue before either of them come close to it.

“I didn’t bring my books,” Nicky mentions belatedly. His hands are empty: no phone, no wallet, just him, slowly baking.

“Bring your books next time,” Alex says, tugging on one of Nicky’s curls. “It’s the beach, and you want to read about hockey plays?”

Nicky looks out to the water, to the whole huge body of it, and imagines it freezing over in winter, sharks swimming under his skates. The crisp sounds of hitting a puck. It was all he ever wanted as a child; to skate instead of walk, across clean ice. Longing for the bodies of water to freeze over… Nicky had wanted the whole world to wait for him; even if they weren’t watching.

“I couldn’t let go,” Nicky admits, watching him sort out how much money he ought to pay the poor delivery guy for hunting for them along the whole stretch of sand. “I don’t think I can.”

“Is okay if you can’t,” Alex says. “Sometimes you just… don’t get over things.”

Nicky’s eyes stray to his skin, the broad, sweeping black ink. “Yeah.”

Alex smiles at him wanly, and then looks away.

“What do you want to do?” Nicky asks, wanting to take the hand Alex scratches his beard with, to take into his own. The world waited for no one, and Nicky wasn’t the one people were watching, and sometimes Nicky was happy for it, happy to breathe under that eyeless gaze. “We can do anything you want.”

“Anything?” Alex asks, and his mouth quirks up, laughing once Nicky tries to jab his chopsticks up his nose.

“Anything,” Nicky reiterates, once Alex has snatched his chopsticks away. “But sex on the beach,” he says, “I’m vetoing that right now.”

“Vanilla,” Alex says dismissively, but then he leans in to kiss Nicky on the forehead, lingering.

“Think of the PR nightmare,” Nicky says, and then: “What?”

“Nothing,” Alex shrugs. “I just…” He tilts his head, looks down at his toes, and then takes another bite of his food. “Haven’t seen you like that in long while.”

“Like what?” Nicky asks.

“Happy,” says Alex. “You know.”

“I’ve been happy,” Nicky says, carefully, before the full force of Alex’s attention floors him. Alex at his most concentrated is a sight to behold; all sharp lines and fast action, and Nicky has seen that in him for a good, long while, but it doesn’t mean that he knows what to do in the face of it. He doesn’t really know what to do with Alex, is the thing. “Just. Also worried.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Alex asks.

“Yeah,” Nicky mutters. “I don’t know, it just… doesn’t go away.”

“That’s okay,” says Alex. “Things don’t go to plan all the time, you know? No matter how much you’re forcing it. What are you chasing?”

“...Myself, mostly,” Nicky admits.

“We can’t have everything we want,” says Alex, careful. “Better to be far from the ice sometimes, yes? What you’re gonna do if hockey’s gone? Then what would you want? How do you think you gonna be happy?”

Nicky watches him. “I don’t know,” he lies. “I just thought somehow that by now…”

“You’d have more?”

“Yes,” Nicky whispers. The waves lap against the shore and the seagulls scream, and in here, hockey almost doesn’t matter.

“What if—”

“Sasha,” Nicky begs.

Alex tangles their fingers together, brushing the sand away from his knuckles before he kisses them. “Why?”

“I can’t imagine it,” Nicky says. “All my life, and…”

“Hockey,” Alex continues. “All your life, you wanted to play hockey, and you’re still playing.”

“It hurts,” Nicky confesses, knowing that Alex understands—Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang. All the years blurring into one faceless, angry deity. “It matters so little—”

“But it matters to you,” says Alex. “So it hurts… We want things, you know? You want and want and want and get nowhere, and that’s life.”

“It was my dream to play hockey all my life,” Nicky says, “And now I live it, but it barely feels like my dream anymore.”

“It’s not easy,” Alex agrees. He’s still holding Nicky’s hand. “But it’s not everything that matters.”

“I love you,” Nicky wonders, in Swedish. “Does that matter?”

Alex kisses him.

“You understood that,” Nicky accuses. “You understood me.”

“Of course,” Sasha says, brushing away the sand he’d left on Nicky’s cheek, brushing his knuckles against Nicky’s jaw, brushing the tears of helpless shock from his eyes, “Of course I understand you.”  


**Author's Note:**

> in a jar (which this fic is a remix of) was written one year ago, and i wanted to see how much my writing style has changed, and what's different now, and how much i have (hopefully) grown as a writer. i had a hard time starting this, but i shut my brain off and wrote from 11pm and now it's 4am, without pressuring myself with the concept of good writing. comments and concrit both are very, very welcome! 
> 
> this fic is not beta'd. i literally haven't even read it from head to toe. it's 4am and i am an impatient idiot, so here it is. hahahhahhahahha ugh 
> 
> thanks to becko for screaming


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